I’m not going to lie: When I first heard that Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 would be following up on 2008’s fantastic HD remake by adding jumping to Rad Spencer’s skill set, my knee jerked so hard it’s a wonder my desk didn’t crack in half. The original NES Bionic Commando remains one of the very few games that, in my estimation, achieved near-perfection, and Rearmed was an amazing modernized recreation of its mechanics. But much of the essential genius of both games was in the way they presented players with engrossing platform-based gameplay while completely removing the genre’s universal ability to jump. Without the ability to leap into the air, Spencer was forced to master his bionic arm to grapple, climb, and swing around the world. It worked in large part because of the game’s spot-on physics and controls; zipping around on the bionic arm was natural, fluid, and precise.
Adding the ability to jumping into the mix seems like a terrible mistake — not just an example of missing the point, but of completely undermining the essential point of the entire series. Or so I thought until I actually tried the game on the Penny Arcade Expo show floor. I’m still not sold on the ability to jump. The thing is, though, I don’t have be. In fact, I don’t have to jump, period.
